Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Hawking had opinions on the black hole info paradox

The discovery of black hole radiation also led to a 30-year controversy over the fate of things that had fallen into a black hole.

Dr. Hawking initially said that detailed information about whatever had fallen in would be lost forever because the particles coming out would be completely random, erasing whatever patterns had been present when they first fell in. Paraphrasing Einstein’s complaint about the randomness inherent in quantum mechanics, Dr. Hawking said, “God not only plays dice with the universe, but sometimes throws them where they can’t be seen.”

Many particle physicists protested that this violated a tenet of quantum physics, which says that knowledge is always preserved and can be retrieved. Leonard Susskind, a Stanford physicist who carried on the argument for decades, said, “Stephen correctly understood that if this was true, it would lead to the downfall of much of 20th-century physics.”

On another occasion, he characterized Dr. Hawking to his face as “one of the most obstinate people in the world; no, he is the most infuriating person in the universe.” Dr. Hawking grinned.

Dr. Hawking admitted defeat in 2004. Whatever information goes into a black hole will come back out when it explodes. One consequence, he noted sadly, was that one could not use black holes to escape to another universe. “I’m sorry to disappoint science fiction fans,” he said.

Despite his concession, however, the information paradox, as it is known, has become one of the hottest and deepest topics in theoretical physics. Physicists say they still do not know how information gets in or out of black holes.

Not only that, but physicists do not have a sufficiently coherent definition of information in order to make this a paradox. And even if they did, there were be no way to resolve an issue about information leaking out of a black hole.

This shows the sorry state of theoretical physics, that such a non-question could be "one of the hottest and deepest topics".

As a graduate student in 1963, he learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular wasting disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was given only a few years to live.

He probably had some other degenerative disease.

Dr. Hawking was a strong advocate of space exploration, saying it was essential to the long-term survival of the human race. “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of,” he told an audience in Hong Kong in 2007.

Mars will always be much more hostile to human life than the Earth, no matter what we do to Earth.

By then string theory, which claimed finally to explain both gravity and the other forces and particles of nature as tiny microscopically vibrating strings, like notes on a violin, was the leading candidate for a “theory of everything.”

In “A Brief History of Time,” Dr. Hawking concluded that “if we do discover a complete theory” of the universe, “it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists.”

He added, “Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of why it is that we and the universe exist.”

“If we find the answer to that,” he continued, “it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.”

The New World Order is a group of demon-controlled fools: "Increased attention given to UFO activity promotes the concept of political unification of this planet. This is perhaps the most commonly recurring theme in my entire study of these groups."~Jacques Vallee, Messengers of Deception﻿

We actually have a Stephen Hawking story in my family that we tell whenever we want to make my step brother blush.

My mother attended a lecture Dr. Hawking was giving at UCSB back in the 80's about quantum mechanics at the request of her government employers. At the time, Hawking was still using one of his assistants to interpret for him instead of using the voice synthesizer he became well known for.

Before the lecture started, she spotted my step brother (who was a student at UCSB in the nuclear engineering program at the time) who was also attending the lecture. She waved to him and called out to him by name before she proudly told those sitting around her "That's my son sitting over there!" my step brother was utterly mortified. His friends promptly teased him "Hey man, your MOM is checking up on you!"

My brother was even further embarrassed when it turned out many of his class mates ended up copying my mother's notes from the lecture, she apparently was already familiar with the material.